The Month Ahead - June Doom?

Two months in and I still have no idea if this team is actually good or not. At times, the offense hits like the 1997 Mariners in the Kingdome if the Kingdome were on the moon. Other times, the offense goes dead silent for 3 or 4 games in a row for absolutely no good reason. The pitchers, oh the pitchers. Every starter except for Yovani Gallardo has hit the DL at some point so far. The bullpen has been particularly volatile and dinger-prone. Despite all that, they went 14-14 in May and ended the month with a 4 game winning streak. The road trip of doom through DC, Boston, and Colorado ended up not being a complete catastrophe (another .500 record!) and the earlier series wins over Texas, Anaheim, and Philadelphia helped buoy the record quite a bit.

Moving onto June where we continue the freshly started 11 game home stand followed by another long home stand later in the month. Let's take a look.

• End of week one: I am not optimistic about that Tampa Bay series. Corey fucking Dickerson has turned into 1995 Edgar Martinez suddenly and all the other ex-Mariner weirdos on this team just give me the willies. Remember how the Mariners almost got sold to Tampa Bay? It's like they've just been slowly and methodically collecting off-brand Mariners ever since. The longest of long cons. Tell me I'm wrong. Their dome is even weirder and shittier than the Kingdome was!
• Week two: Well, the Twins are good again this year so that should be a tough one. And then it's the series we're all dreading, the fucking Blue Jays and all of their British Columbia fans who invade Safeco like the world's drunkest, surly-yet-polite army of awkward white weirdos. After the Jays "got right" and swept the Mariners in Toronto last month, I cannot overstate how much I want some payback in the form of brutal, demoralizing, position-player-pitching blowout wins by the Mariners. Fuckin' eh.
• Week three: On the road again and hey it's the team they just played last week, but four games this time. Again with the MLB scheduler curse. Have some hot dish, Mariners.
• Week four: Back at home against Detroit is fine, but oh god no it's the soul crushing Astros again. Fucking great.
• Week five: Luckily after the Astros, it's the adorably bad Phillies again! Yay! Maybe the Mariners will score 40 runs in 2 games this time (this lack of hubris will surely bite me in the ass).

So, like I said...this team is incredibly strange, frustrating, and at times, utterly brilliant. James Paxton just came back tonight from the DL and pitched like a golden god, which holy crap did we all miss watching good pitching like that the last month or so. June should see the return of the KING, Iwakuma, and also Mitch Haniger. Cannot wait to see how Haniger fares the rest of the season after absolutely lighting April ablaze before the oblique injury.

To be real, the season is still in shambles, more or less. The Astros are running away with the division. To keep Wild Card hopes alive, the Mariners need to play the rest of the season at around a .750 winning percentage, which is possible but highly improbable. When this team hits well, though, they are very fun to watch so we're not quite in a death spiral here yet. Maybe they'll go .500 again this month then we'll still have no idea what the hell is going to happen. Baseball!

Bonus content! I wrote a recap of a Mariners win last week for Lookout Landing that I was pretty happy with. Enjoy!